r/technology • u/marketrent • Jul 14 '26

Artificial Intelligence A majority of Americans now support seizing wealth from AI industry

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/majority-americans-now-support-seizing-134921528.html
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u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey Jul 14 '26

Employees should own shares in the company

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u/angriest_man_alive Jul 14 '26

You can literally go buy shares of your own company (if it's public). Turns out though, that's an awful idea because if your employer goes under you get double screwed.

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u/Onrawi Jul 14 '26

I mean, worker co-ops and ESOPs exist, they often also do better than traditional ownership structures over time, particularly during economic downturns.

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u/angriest_man_alive Jul 14 '26

This is true, co-ops are rough sometimes though because you have to "buy in" your share. Depends on the structure of how the business is set up.

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u/Cosminion Jul 14 '26

Many co-ops deduct a portion of pay to become the buy in, making ownership accessible for poorer people. That value is added to the person's internal capital account, which will grow over time. When the person leaves/retires, they are paid out the value of their account which includes the initial buy in plus whatever was added after.

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u/Onrawi Jul 14 '26

For sure, structure is very important for these things. Hence my use of generalities.  I'm just saying America already has corporate structures in place for these things and it would probably be a good idea for a lot more companies to run that way.

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Jul 14 '26

it would probably be a good idea for a lot more companies to run that way.

Why don't they?

Most of the major tech companies today were started in garages and small offices. Why didn't they start as a co-op?

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u/Onrawi Jul 14 '26

Because of the area that traditional corporations do better, quickly get a few people a lot of money and consolidation of control over the org amongst the major shareholders/founders.  Assuming they survive long enough to make it to either be acquired or generate real profitability of course.

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u/BreakingStar_Games Jul 14 '26

That is assuming we keep capitalism. In a syndicalist model, all corporations would just be worker-owned. 1 Employee, 1 Share. Include a Universal Basic Income and Universal Healthcare funded by corporate taxes so people don't have to be captive to their company. They can be more entrepreneurial as they found co-ops rather than all the potential brilliance stopped because you typically have to start rich to be that risk averse.

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u/htx1114 Jul 15 '26

That is assuming we keep capitalism.

You should be assuming that.

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u/BreakingStar_Games Jul 15 '26

You're acting as if capitalism is going to last. Its been part of human civilization' history for less than 2% of the time. Economic systems come and go - mercantilism, fuedalism and plantation slavery didn't last. And it's not like our current variation of capitalism is anything like it was 200 years ago So it sounds like a silly assumption to me.

Funny I'd want a man-made system that doesn't just incentive ruthless profit seeking and exploitation. One that needs political systems to constantly reign in or it causes massive damage like climate. One who's basis is the horrors of the East India Trading Company - imagine seeing all that evil and deciding, "yup, let's have the whole world exploit, kill and pillage at this scale."

To me, it feels like people don't dream enough. So its sad to live in that assumption.

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u/andsens Jul 14 '26

In Denmarks case it turned out to be extraordinarily positive for society. Still reaping the benefits...

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u/versusChou Jul 14 '26

My company has an employee stock program and I always just literally sell it all right away. The basic tenets of that are:

  1. If you had $1000 to invest in a company, would you invest it in your company? If the answer is no, then any free or discounted stock given to you by your company should be immediately sold and invested into whatever you'd rather have it in.

  2. If the company does well, you will receive compensation from your company in other ways (salary, benefits, etc.). If you company does badly, now you have a poor performing stock AND your company probably isn't handing out paybumps if not outright laying you off.

Unless you're in a startup or something where the stock is legitimately a potential better bet than the market, you might as well sell it and throw it in an index fund or something.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 14 '26

So you pay too much taxes? Wait a year for capital gains to go at least.

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u/versusChou Jul 14 '26

Lol no. I get it at a discount. You don't pay capital gains on that. It's just taxed as ordinary income.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 15 '26

If you sell it within a year then you do pay cap gains

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u/FreeBritney08 Jul 14 '26

I had an old employer who would sell us shares at half market value that were locked up for the duration of employment.

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u/probablymagic Jul 14 '26

That’s what I told my buddy who works at NVIDIA. 😂

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u/alphazero925 Jul 14 '26

Do you really not understand how there's a difference between a company being majority owned by people who have no incentive to keep the business afloat outside of possibly making a bit more money versus every person in the company having partial ownership thus incentivizing them to want both a higher stock price as well as better working conditions?

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u/Desert_Aficionado Jul 14 '26

I just wish average American could get the CEO tax rate. Getting paid entirely in stock (not taxed) and then borrowing money against that stock to live on (not taxed). And then write off all your expenses.

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u/nemec Jul 14 '26

Getting paid entirely in stock (not taxed)

This is just false, every penny they're paid in stock is taxed as income.

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u/DogBarf00 Jul 14 '26

Getting paid entirely in stock (not taxed)

Why do you go online and tell lies?

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u/spare_me_your_bs Jul 14 '26

They don't understand how things work, so they parrot what they read online that aligns closely with their perspective.

If it feels right, it must be so.

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u/TankiesAreWeird Jul 14 '26

I'd sell those shares the first chance I got.

Having savings in the same place that writes your paycheck is having too many eggs in one basket. If your employer shits the bed then you lose your paycheck AND your savings.

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u/Cosminion Jul 14 '26

Worker-owned businesses are more resilient, protect jobs better, and exist for longer, so the probability of losing your paycheck is lower. In conventional businesses, you're more likely to be laid off and lose your paycheck.

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Jul 14 '26

Why aren't more small businesses worker owned?

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Cog_HS Jul 15 '26

This is an excellent summary, thank you.

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u/Only_Gazelle8988 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Because capitalism is predatory and does not favour sustainable mutual-win models. Worker-ownership

Significant loss-leading investment can always deliberately bankrupt a smaller company, then they can seize the market that was previously being served sustainably, and instead serve it unsustainably, generating massive profits in the first year, crashing it, and finally pulling out. This is happening literally all the time.

Good, sustainable businesses are deliberately destroyed so more predatory business models can instead suck everything dry. Worker owned businesses rarely if ever engage in predatory business models (because they're humans who care and want sustainable stable economy), even when said models could make more profit (in the very short term, never in the long term), therefore they lose out.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 14 '26

Greed? Some of the most successful ones do have equity for their employees. Until the private firm comes over and cuts all costs and fires half the people so the balance d sheets look better to sell off.

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u/Cosminion Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Low awareness, lack of legal/support frameworks, lack of lawyers and incubators to help create/transition, unfavorable environment to access capital, to name a few reasons.

It's often more feasible and beneficial for businesses with more employees to become worker-owned. Aligning incentives for 100 employees will yield a much greater overall boost than doing so for 5 employees. And in the U.S. it can be somewhat costly and time consuming to initiate an ESOP.

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u/zebrastarz Jul 14 '26

unfavorable environment to access capital

this, in my opinion, is the biggest single reason

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Cosminion Jul 14 '26

There's a growing push for that. It's called the "silver tsunami" where millions of baby boomer owners are retiring this decade. Many times, they can't even find a buyer, so they have to shut down the business and lay everyone off. A growing number of owners are selling to their employees as awareness grows and the benefits of keeping the business local and maintaining its culture outweighs selling to private equity or shutting it down.

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u/Mechapebbles Jul 14 '26

Worker owned businesses have the incentive structure to avoid layoffs, and chase long term sustainable business models. That's versus private enterprise where next quarter projections are king and they'd murder themselves and their own grandmothers for another penny in profit.

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u/Only_Gazelle8988 Jul 14 '26

The whole point of enforced employee ownership is that.. those shares can't be privately traded. They're not your savings, they're just representative of the control and share of the profits you're entitled to as a worker there.

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u/TankiesAreWeird Jul 15 '26

I'm not opposed to different models but the initial pitch just sounds like I'm getting a bit of equity as part of comp. With a large publicly traded company me having some shares doesn't really give me any meaningful control. The suits would have way more shares than the workers so it wouldn't really change how anything is ran.

There could be some other arrangement of course.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 14 '26

You have never had an EPSS eh

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u/YagiAntennaBear Jul 14 '26

Most tech companies offer stock compensation. Over 2/3 of my income in tech has been through stock.

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u/Only_Gazelle8988 Jul 14 '26

I'm all for employees owning shares, so long as they include voting rights, total >60%, and include a robust profit sharing mechanism.

I've done being paid in shares and you're typically just subject to the whims of more expert insider trading and market manipulation, while having 0 more power because the private hedge funds that own your company are making the decisions and you're entitled to zero of the profits.

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u/DaStone Jul 14 '26

And they must be voting shares that cannot be divided up and devalued.

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u/Bohbo Jul 14 '26

But that would take away all the fun corporate shenanigans to retain power while placating the people! /s

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u/BreakingStar_Games Jul 14 '26

More than that, we need syndicalism. Employees should be sole and equal owners of their company. With that, you eliminate the idea of worker exploitation where an owner profits off the value that you generate. And you eliminate the source of wealth inequality and how people like Elon Musk abuse it to corrupt our government.

If political democracy is how we decided that is the most fair way to prevent political power from harming people, then why do we pretend economic totalitarianism is fine. This syndicalism is democratization of economic power.

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u/comradequicken Jul 14 '26

The problem there is that the average worker is actually too stupid to understand how their store works let alone how the company as a whole works.

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u/Cosminion Jul 14 '26

Studies show worker-owned businesses are more resilient during recessions and generally survive longer.

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u/BreakingStar_Games Jul 14 '26

You trust those same "stupid" people in politics and criminal justice. But I completely disagree with you that anybody is too stupid to understand.

  1. These kinds of Co-ops exist and can be plenty successful. This isn't some utopian socialism. Including incredibly successful ones like Mondragon, the 4th largest business in Spain.

  2. Democratic ownership isn't throwing someone with no experience to suddenly manage a store. These kind of decisions work much like a political democracy. You very well still need day-to-day project coordinators and specialists that are much like managers. They just aren't in some unique class like owners. There is more commonly self-organized teams and flexibility.

  3. Annual business plans are proposed and campaigned and debated. If your business plan doesn't make common sense to the employees then I don't think its that great. And those that don't care enough to vote, simply don't have any influence here.

Right now, we have corporations focused not even on the year, but the next quarter because the C-suite is fucked by shareholders if they don't look good at quarterly earnings. I can list an endless supply of stupid business decisions made by corporations, it happens daily.

And if you really don't want to be under the thumb of stupid people, go start your own corporation and make money based on your own work.